Sexless Marriage… Now She Wants an Open Marriage

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person, real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. All right, I'm gonna read you another email from a follower, a husband, and this one starts off like a lot of emails from guys do, which is he talks about his marriage and how things have faded between he and his wife. They both got caught in what I call the family machine, you know, with kids and bills and responsibilities and everything else. And the connection between he and his wife has drifted over time. But for this particular guy, we'll call him William, his situation took an interesting turn. And I have heard this more than a few times. His email to me says, I'm 46 and my wife is 44. We've been married for 18 years and we have 2 kids, 16 and 13. Our marriage has not been perfect, but I always thought we were solid. We've built a good life together. Our sex life slowed down over the years like most long marriages, but it wasn't completely dead. About 6 months ago, my wife sat me down and told me that she thinks we should consider an open marriage. He says, I honestly thought she was joking at first. She said she still loves me, but she feels like she missed out on experiences when she was younger. She said she wants to explore her sexuality while still staying married. She said this could actually make our marriage stronger because we would be honest about everything. I told her that sounded insane me. She said I was being close-minded and that modern relationships are evolving. I asked if there was someone specific that she had in mind and she said no, but I don't really believe that. Since then, things have been weird. Our sex life has not improved. If anything, it's gotten worse. She spends a lot more time on her phone. She started going out with friends more often. When I bring up the open marriage conversation, she says I'm overreacting and that it was just a discussion. But the fact that she even brought it up makes me feel like the ground under our marriage isn't stable anymore. I don't want an open marriage. I want my wife, but I'm starting to wonder if she's already mentally halfway out the door. All right, it's a good one, and this is one that brings up a lot of emotion in guys listening to the story, and I'm sure it brings up a lot of emotion in you, Mr. William, and rightfully so. Ideas like this don't suddenly appear out of nowhere unless something has internally shifted within the person who brings it up. That could be something as simple as, man, I'm really bored with our marriage, or I have a lot of resentment towards you. I just do not like you anymore for insert very valid reasons. But from what I have seen, and to qualify this further, to be completely fair, from the guys that come to me for help, what I have seen, unfortunately, Mr. William and others that are going through this, is that it usually means, yeah, and your suspicions were right here. There's somebody else in the picture. That does not always mean full-blown affair. Let's get that out of the way. But what it often means is attention, flirting, texting, somebody new making them feel interesting and fun and alive again. And instead of saying something very adult and mature and thoughtful, which would be, you know, I'm starting to have some feelings for somebody outside of my marriage, and that is not great, but it's not unheard of, and I'm going to deal with this in a healthy way. Instead of that, they say, you know, maybe this makes me question my marriage. It may be argued that this softens it a little bit to say it's not necessarily I'm questioning my marriage to William specifically, but I'm questioning the institution of marriage and long-term monogamy. Usually in such cases, something or someone is kind of implanted in their brain the idea of, you know, there are alternative ways of approaching this whole marriage thing. So combine that with new feelings towards somebody else, and voilà, they come to you and say, hey, you ever thought about this open marriage thing? And William and others are left going, what the hell? What Mary has done here is she has kind of reframed what could be just a very personal impulse, if you will, into kind of a philosophical thing. And this philosophical thing, this open marriage thing, it's not a new concept at all. It's been around for generations. It's just been kind of hush-hush. And what's interesting is that most people assume that it's the man who comes to the wife saying, I'm bored with us sexually. I want to get my kicks elsewhere. Let's be honest, that happens. But it may surprise you to hear that, you know what, when we survey couples that are in open marriages, and we have done this, by the way, there is an organization called Open Minded that famously surveyed their 60-some thousand couples that belong to their organization. It's an organization that's devoted to online talk and conversation around on open marriages. So, they polled their audience and two-thirds of their audience has said, "You know what? It was the woman who suggested the whole open marriage thing." I know, shocking. But the more I have learned about human sexuality and long-term monogamy and marriage over the years, I've been doing this for over a decade now, that does not surprise me at all. If I told you that one person within a long-term marriage is saying, "You know what? I'm kind of bored and I'm unfulfilled in this marriage." If you had to put money down on which one it is, the man or the wife that is saying that, you better put your money down on the wife. Women are usually the ones to report a state of unhappiness and unfulfillment within a marriage. We know for a fact that the majority, around 70%, of divorces are initiated by women. Or more specifically, to be fair, the people that actually file for the divorce 70+ percent of the time are women. We also know for a fact that the majority of women within long-term monogamous relationships report a lower sexual desire or sex drive, if you will, compared to their male counterpart. In short, it is fair to say that women in general are just not turned on when in marriages. It takes some work to get them going, so to speak. It takes a sense of novelty and excitement and emotional connectedness, yes, to get them to a level where their male partner basically feels day in and day out. Thanks to the old testosterone and other things coursing through our system, men are usually kind of ready to go. The average dude, I know there are exceptions to this, but the average dude, even with a lot of stress and everything else going on in his life, if his wife were to say, hey, let's get it on, the average dude says, you got it, let's do it. The average woman is not quite wired in the same way. And what we see again and again is if you take that woman outside of that marriage, outside of that long-term commitment, put her back on the market, so to speak, most women report a resurgence in sexual energy. And how they reconcile that, how they come to terms with that, is, oh, it must have been my spouse that was keeping me down, so to speak, suppressing me and all that energy. And that may be a part of it, but a big part of it is, no, now you're outside of monogamy, outside of commitment and safety and everything else. When things become uncertain and when things become new, that's when your sexual energy is at its peak. So you can see how something like open marriage which means going out and meeting new people, forming intimate connections with new people, how that can be very invigorating to the average woman. And conversely, how that can be extremely confusing and scary to the average dude. The average dude who feels that constant hum of sexuality towards his wife even though he's been with her for 20, 30 years. So back to William and Mary in this situation with her coming to him saying, have you ever thought about this open marriage? Again, that may not mean that there's a specific person in mind, although from what I've seen, yes it does. But at the very least, It means that they are imagining alternatives to just you and her. The idea has taken root, so to speak. And that's why the ground under the feet of your marriage feels very unstable. Because the marriage that you thought you were in, William, is not necessarily the one that your wife wants. Now, a mistake that a lot of men make in these situations is to panic, to start negotiating, to start trying to convince the wife that your whole mindset right now is completely wrong. The problem is, is that attraction and sexuality and everything doesn't respond well to negotiation. What it does respond to is clarity. Dude, William, if you're not up for this, which most men in your situation are not, and that's completely understandable, I wouldn't be either, it behooves you to be very, very clear. This is not the kind of marriage that I want. Very calm, very direct, and no drama. And then the question becomes, okay, so are both people willing to recommit to them, to the couple, to the monogamous relationship? From what I've seen, unfortunately, in a lot of these cases is the cat's already out of the bag. The Marys of the world, so to speak, have already had a taste of the good life, if you will. Often it means I've already started forming an emotional, if not a physical relationship with another human being. It stirred up a lot of feelings in me, and what I'm trying to do is to live the life of this very exciting, very titillating, very energizing open marriage thing, basically a new relationship with somebody else, while maintaining the safety and security and predictability of your marriage. She may absolutely love you, William and others, but she doesn't have the level of excitement and commitment and sexuality that you hope that she does towards you. Something else has reignited those feelings in her and she's trying to come to terms with it. That's what I've seen in most of these cases. You see, long-term marriages require consistent effort in order to keep the spark alive. And when that effort fades, boredom can set in. And as many guys have said, and it sounds very sexist to say this, but I'm going to say that there's a lot of truth to this. Don't let your wife get bored. If maintaining intimacy and some of the fun and sexuality in your relationship is important to you, dude, which it is to most guys watching this, then yeah, you got to keep things exciting. And fun? No, it does not mean 24/7 parades. It doesn't mean bringing other human beings into the bedroom necessarily. It means just reintroducing novelty, fun, excitement, unpredictability. The kind of stuff that you very naturally did when you were dating. When we hear a lot of women say to us, you know why our bedroom is dead? Because he is not the same dude that he was when we were dating. There is a kernel of truth to that. You don't realize it, but in the honeymoon phase of the relationship, you put on the best act, dude. You were the most romantic. You were the most open. You were probably the most masculine. There was a hint of, man, I don't know if this guy's committed or not? Is he still texting other women or not? Is he still dating? He says he's not, but I caught him looking at that other girl the other day. It sounds counterintuitive, but that uncertainty and that newness— the newness is huge— are two crucial components to keeping the spark alive. So the question is, how can you do that without being a manipulative a-hole? There is a thought pattern in the world of a lot of pickup artistry, red pill, manosphere stuff, which talks about instilling a sense of dread within your woman so she dreads losing you. She senses that at the drop of a hat, you're gonna leave her and go for this other woman, and that's the only way to keep that spark alive. There's truth to that, but it's all about your intent here. Is your intent to spark some real insecurity in her in order to get your physical needs met? Congratulations, you're an asshole. If the intent is to say, I want to bring about a level of energy and novelty to keep us closer together, and I do so by frequent date nights, I do so by surprising her, I do so by recognizing when I'm becoming a little bit too close and a little bit too needy, and I recognize the need for independence between the two of us, I recognize the need for inner security. I know I need to let her go and do her thing and hang out with her friends. That doesn't mean she's gonna leave me and cheat on me. And I don't need to overexplain myself day in and day out where I was and where I was going. That's also very needy on my part. And if she needs that, that is needy on her part too. A lot of you guys come to the conclusion that you're kind of the steward of the relationship. You're kind of the one driving the boat here as far as maintaining the sexy and the independence and the fun between the two of you. And the answer is yeah, you are. A lot of the women in our lives are very much bogged down by motherhood. They got a career and now they're getting older and perimenopause and so forth. So being the sexy wife to my husband is kind of way down on the list of things that they think about. Right or wrong, that's just reality. So it behooves you to be the loving but sexy, slightly dangerous, but in a good way kind of partner who, I guess you could say, kind of keeps her on her toes in a healthy way, maintains the positive emotional tension. And when you ignore all of that year in and year out for for decades on end, and you have a lot of societal messaging telling a lot of women these days there's more to this life, and in fact there are alternative ways of approaching this whole relationship thing, combined with conversations with the guy from work or talking to some old boyfriend online or whatever it may be, voilà, you have a wife who says, hey, you ever thought about this open marriage thing? Now, let me say this, William, get this out of the way. I've talked about this before in countless videos, so I apologize if you've seen this before, guys. What I have seen that often results from this is the woman will very much convince the husband that, you know, a sexual reawakening awaits us. I'm gonna do my thing and you are gonna do your thing with other women too. And this very much appeals to an innate part of our human nature as the human male, which is sexual variety is usually a big thing for men. Things like pornography and sex workers and so forth prey upon this inclination that we have as men. We want a lot of different women, but we sacrifice that. We put that aside and we focus all of our attention on our wife. And now suddenly wife is saying, you know, You don't necessarily have to be so disciplined. You can go elsewhere. You have my blessing. And a lot of guys get wide-eyed and say, oh my gosh, this sounds amazing. I'm just gonna have woman after woman after woman, and it's all okay, and it's all above board, and everybody's cool with it. Win-win. Not so fast. What often happens is the men find out that the woman has a lot of sexual luck, if you will. Maybe with one guy that she's kind of quasi-committed to, like a boyfriend on the side, or she really gets her kicks and she's jumping from man to man to man. And the husband, the Williams of the world, on the other hand, if they're lucky, a couple of months goes by and they have a date with some woman and they don't really click and it's not that great. There may or may not be something physical as a result, but it's nothing that really knocks the socks off. And then he has another drought for a few months, and then he meets some gal that he has coffee with and she's not so sure about this dating a guy who's in an open relationship, so she kind of ghosts him. That's the typical result for the average dude out there in these situations. Sorry to be negative, but I'm just being realistic here. The women in these situations, usually have a lot more luck than the men in these situations. And it usually doesn't last very long until the man goes, "Timeout, I don't want to do this anymore." And the woman says, "Too bad, so sad, I do." And voilà, divorce. Bringing other human beings into your world, which is what you're doing when you open a marriage, often, not always, but often leads to chaos. One day you're excited and titillated and it's fun. The next day you feel very jealous. Some guys are surprised at the level of anger and vitriol that comes as a result of the jealousy that they have towards their woman. And it's kind of scary. Scary, all the way to intense feelings of sadness and despair, like, what the hell have I done? To feelings of being very disrespected by his spouse because he may, you know, come to her and say, I'm not having any luck with the women and this kind of sucks, can we talk about it? And she's grabbing her purse and heading out the door saying, uh, talk to you later tonight. There's a term that guys these days use, the old cuck, cuckolding, an extreme form of being, I guess, a simp, a pushover, a chump. A lot of these guys don't know which way is up or down. They're caught in this mess, in this chaos. They were doing it to hold on to the relationship, but they feel their wife slipping away from them. It's just a real mess. This is one of the reasons why we have groups like The Brotherhood to help men navigate these really weird and chaotic situations. You can learn more about The Brotherhood, our private support community for men only, at help4men.com, or jump right to the join page at help4men.com/join. We get together not to push men towards divorce, not to demonize women, but to give men a place to think clearly about what can be very difficult and very emotional situations like this. So William and others going through this, ultimately You cannot decide what direction your spouse goes in in these kind of situations. But what you can be clear about is ultimately what you choose and what you are comfortable with, regardless of what your wife may say, regardless of what society may say, regardless of what I may say. What do you want, dude? Because your feelings and your opinions and all this, it matters. If you feel bad about this, if you feel like this goes against your values and it goes against who you are and your identity, then say so. So you need to be clear about exactly what kind of relationship you want. What kind of relationship are are you willing to live in? That clarity is far more powerful than any kind of panic or anger that you may have in the situation. And yes, let's put it out there, this may very well, in fact, it most likely will result in the end of your relationship. You just have to trust in yourself to know that you will be okay. If you like this kind of stuff, please give me a like, give me a subscribe. I do appreciate it. And guys, we will catch you on the next one.